Communication is a vital part of today’s society but even more so for terrorists. However, given the fact that they are in danger of having their cover blown, they usually resort to other means of communication, often hidden in plain sight. As you probably know from movies or documentaries about terrorism, they often use code or metaphors to hide their true intentions or to even arouse suspicions regarding their identities and plans. In this article, we will be taking a look at the top known ways in which terrorists usually communicate.
Dead Drops
This is a pretty old method of communication, but it has been preserved relevant by its potency over the years. Terrorists also use dead drops, which consist of having messages physically dropped at a location. The receiver of the message then picks up the message and reads it, and replies if need be. Today, there is a digital twist involved, as they prefer to save digital messages in drafts on different digital platforms like emails, instant messaging and others. The receiver of the message knows the login details of that account and checks in to read the draft.
By doing this, they preserve their anonymity but also exclude a lot of the risks of dealing with connections between multiple digital devices as well as using digital devices too much, like always having to charge them. If you’re interested in efficient charging solutions, check out mytrendyphone but for now let’s see what else these guys have in store.
USB Drives
This is a popular modern means of communication. Digital content can be easily stored in a secure, untraceable means of transporting information from point A to point B. Unlike digital accounts or email addresses, USB drives cannot be tracked back to an owner. Anyone can buy a Flash Drive from an electronics store and upload sensitive information on it, only to be spread amongst “colleagues.” It’s one of the most efficient means of communication also because today you can get USB drives as big as 1 TB, which means a thousand GB worth of dangerous information.
Disposable SIMs
Whatever method they use, it’s all about not being traced, so they also use disposable SIMs. These are regular SIM cards that they throw out after a single phone call, message or what have you. This is done so that the message, in case of being intercepted, cannot be traced to an actual person. Best case scenario, it’s traced to a dumpster somewhere, with no person attached to it.
Through Images in JPEG or GIF Format
These are most commonly used for online memes and funny posts on social media, but they can also be used, and frequently are, to spread messages of terrorism and for communication between different terrorist organizations or members of an organization. The way it works is, a rather harmless image is used as a disguise for sensitive or dangerous information stored away somewhere in the image or even as the picture’s title. Terrorists have been known to get quite…” inventive” with hiding messages within other messages or images, and even the most innocent looking GIF could potentially hide a dark truth behind it.
Gaming Chat Rooms
Today’s video games often time have chat rooms, especially online multiplayer games. While it’s traditionally used as a means for players to communicate with each other, it has also become a favored platform on which terrorists send each other encoded messages. Who would think of looking for terrorist messages in a video game chat room, right? That must’ve been what they thought when they started implementing this technique of getting information across without being detected.
